by John Yount
“I need to talk to you and Poppa,” she told her mother, who was cutting out biscuits on the counter with movements as precise as a machine.
“Chile, you know Harley don’t shut the post office till four o’clock, and I ain’t got a minute to spare,” she said, flinging down a handful of flour on the counter, dusting her rolling pin with it, gathering up scraps of biscuit dough, pounding them together, and rolling them out again without even looking at Madeline. She had, after all, seven mouths to feed. Not that it ever soured her temper or bothered her in the least. She had been doing more or less the same thing for as long as Madeline could remember, for longer than she had been alive to remember, Madeline thought with shame.
“Momma,” she said, “I’ve got to tell you and Poppa something if it kills me.”
“No you don’t,” Bertha Marshall said, cutting out biscuits with precise, mechanical twists of her wrist and without even looking up.
“Come with me to the post office. I’ve got to talk.”
“I don’t have a minute to spare,” Bertha Marshall said, but she had stopped working and was leaning forward with both hands braced on the counter.
“Momma, please,” Madeline said.
Without looking at her but with her eyes brimming, her mother walked past her and out the kitchen door as though she were taking the first steps of a long journey. Madeline followed her down the flagstone walk to the little white post office across the dirt driveway. Her mother didn’t even acknowledge Ida Triplett, who had just come out of the post office with a package. “Why Bertha?” Ida said with a broad, friendly smile, “how nice to see you.”
Up the wooden steps and through the door Bertha Marshall went, making the little bell atop the door jingle and making Madeline, who followed behind, feel like a small child, scolded in public.
Inside, her mother stopped stock still and fixed her eyes just below the counter at nothing. She looked very strange standing there with smudges of flour to her elbows, her hands not rolled into her apron as usual, but curled into fists held rigidly at her sides. Harley Marshall clearly didn’t know what to make of her. He was in his traditional post office uniform: a green plastic eyeshade held on his head by an elastic band and two sleeve garters, which he wore just below his elbows around his forearms. “Why woman?” he said, “what ails ye?”
Bertha said not a word.
He opened his mouth to say something else but closed it again in confusion, his big nose and broad chin coming close to meeting without the intervening superstructure of teeth to hold them apart. Since his wife wasn’t talking, he turned to Madeline, who had stopped just inside the threshold with every cell in her body electrified and her mouth dry. “What’s this here?” he asked her, his eyes turning hard either to brace himself for bad news or with a ready-made anger to greet it, she couldn’t tell which.
“Momma,” she began. “Poppa …” For a second she thought she would surely faint, but that tiny thimbleful of strength insisted, having come thus far, she had to go on no matter the damage it would cause. “I just told James, and I’ve got to tell you too. Last Sunday …” She tried to find some moisture in her mouth to go on, but there wasn’t any, and her tongue seemed to click. “Last Sunday, I told Edward I just couldn’t stand our marriage anymore, and I had to have a divorce. He agreed to give me one.”
“Oh can’t you try just a little longer, chile?” her mother said, not looking at anyone or anything but staring just the same.
“Momma,” Madeline said, “that’s all I’ve ever done. That’s all I’ve done since we first married.”
“I’ve never heard of such nonsense!” her father said with deep color rising into his face. “You told your husband you had to have a divorce?”
“Oh, baby, can’t you try a little more?” her mother pleaded.
“What crimes did he commit?” her father asked. “What terrible things did he do?”
Somehow she’d thought that was obvious. Always moving from place to place. Living in nasty little trailer parks. Coming home drunk or not coming home at all. And worst of all and behind it all, never, never taking her into consideration. But somehow she could say none of that. It was humiliating. And she knew suddenly that it wouldn’t sound right. It wouldn’t sound serious enough. Not the way it felt to her. “I’m unhappy,” she whispered at last.
“Horseshit!” her father said. “Who told you life was supposed to be happy? You’ve forgot your upbringing, young’n. You’ve forgot the Bible and your vows. ‘What God has joined together let’ …”
“Hush up,” Bertha Marshall said. “Hush your mouth!”
Bertha seemed to shock not only her husband but herself into silence, and for a long moment no one seemed to breathe. But at last Madeline whispered, “I’m sorry. Momma … Poppa … I’m just so sorry.”
JAMES TALLY
It was just that he felt numb, as though inside his head and inside his heart there were cavernous spaces where his feelings were supposed to be. He searched for acceptable emotions, acceptable thoughts to put in all that emptiness. He decided it wasn’t so much his actual father he missed as the idea of having a father. The whole idea of fatherhood. Anyway he hadn’t been a good son to the father he’d had. When had he ever even been able to follow his advice? So.
And he’d betrayed, no less, the advice he had given himself. He was, after all, nothing whatever like Osceola. But he was free to invent himself, was he not? Now more than ever. There was no one else around to help him do it.
MADELINE TALLY
Wednesday, feeling fragile but also somehow purified and rare, she went back to work, and Leslie was there on the dot of twelve to take her to lunch, looking as pale and haggard as if he himself had been ill. And fifteen minutes before quitting time, she spotted him from her glassed-in office on the second-floor balcony, wandering around the men’s department, fingering shirts and ties he would never think of buying.
That evening he took her to the Gateway Restaurant in Cedar Hill, where she told him how awful it had been to talk to Edward and how awful to tell James and her mother and father, and she nearly talked herself into sadness again. But Leslie’s hand kept seeking hers across the table, and his eyes never left her face, and all at once she understood that this sadness belonged to the old life she had given up and must not be carried, like a keepsake, into her new one. It was such a compelling thought that, after a while, she was able to retrieve the frail, purified new person she had been that morning and notice the lovely man doting on her. Slowly she found herself able to give his hand hopeful, answering squeezes and to look into his eyes and be healed by them.
After dinner. After dark. Snug in his car. She allowed him to hold her close and kiss her.
“Maidy,” he said, his voice wonderfully hoarse, “come home with me. Do. Just for a little while.”
She could do that, she realized. This frail new person she was could do as he proposed, and it was easy to look at him as long and fondly as he was looking at her. She gathered herself as close to him as possible and kissed him. But at last she wagged her forehead gently against his cheek and whispered against his flesh, “No, not just yet.”
Perhaps she said it precisely because she might, so easily, have gone, or because he so much wanted her to, or perhaps she said it only because she could. She didn’t know exactly, but she knew it gratified the new person she was. And when, at last, she got home, she felt virtuous for wanting to make love to Leslie, for telling Edward she wanted a divorce, for having her talk with James and her parents, for surviving three awful days of illness, and for knowing that she might make love to a man, not her husband, at a time of her own choosing.
James was huddled in a corner of the sofa, reading, when she entered the warm, close trailer.
“Hi babe,” she said, almost cheerfully. “Homework?”
“No,” he said, “it’s about Chief Joseph and the Nez Percé Indians.”
“Ahh,” she said, caught a tuft of his unruly hair, and gave
it a playful tug. “Time you paid another visit to the barber, young man.” He didn’t answer or look up, but he seemed more distant than rude.
After she’d changed into her gown and bathrobe, she got a sudden inspiration and melted butter, cut strips of bread to dip into it, got out cinnamon and brown sugar, and, because she knew he loved them, put a tray of cinnamon sticks in the oven. Once or twice, while she worked, she caught his curious, puzzled eyes on her.
“I only made a dozen, and I’ve got a terrible craving, so you’d better be quick,” she told him and winked, but he only gave her a little scrap of a smile before he returned his attention to his book. Nevertheless, while the trailer filled with warm, sweet spice, she stole glances at him as he read and thought his expression had grown softer and younger.
When the cinnamon sticks were done, she arranged them on a platter and took them over and plopped down beside him on the couch. “Dig in,” she told him, but when he reached out, she poked him playfully in the ribs, and he jerked his hand back empty.
“Hey!” he said, although something in her face made him giggle.
She glanced at her wristwatch. “You want to turn the radio on?” she said. “It’s nearly time for Boston Blackie.” So he put his book aside, and they listened to the radio and ate cinnamon sticks, and she felt very snug and sly. She didn’t want the cinnamon sticks, but she ate two of them and then waited patiently until he reached for the very last one before she attacked. “So what makes you think you can have the last one?” she cried, tickling him furiously while he struggled to protect his ribs, sputtering, “Stop … I give … Stop … you’re crazy … Stop … Stop!” And finally she did stop, but not before they were exhausted and the platter was upside down on the floor. Even then, she snatched up the final cinnamon stick and gobbled half of it, although she didn’t want it in the least, and mashed the other half against his lips until he opened his mouth and took it. For minutes, weak and flushed, they laughed at each other and caught their breath until, at last, she pinched his cheek and hugged him and told him good night.
And strangely, the good mood that went to bed with her was even stronger when she rose, and it followed her to work, where, all day, problems seemed to fall neatly into their solutions. Mistakes on receipts and sales slips jumped out at her and identified themselves, and putting the books in order had never been half so easy. For almost the first time in her life, she felt bright and capable. And for the first time in years she felt pretty, so much so that she caught herself nearly gloating when, once or twice during the morning, she spied her image flashing across a fitting mirror.
So she was in a wonderful mood when Leslie called at eleven-thirty to say he couldn’t take her to lunch.
“I’ve got a damned meeting with the county court clerk,” he said miserably.
“That’s all right,” she told him.
“I can’t get out of it,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” she said.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” he said. “I’ll try not to …”
“Hey,” she said, “we’ll have a lovely dinner instead.”
“You’re not upset?” he asked her, but before she could answer, he took another tack. “Dammit, I look forward to our lunches!”
She laughed into the mouthpiece. “You’re so sweet,” she told him. “I look forward to them too, but you just be here at quitting time, and you won’t be in any trouble.”
He laughed then himself, his relief wafting through the phone like the first breath of spring. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “I’m late already.”
When she put the phone back in its cradle, she found she was happy at the prospect of having lunch with the salesladies, or better yet, by herself. Moments later, filled with wonder, her hand still on the telephone, she realized that no matter how smart and successful Leslie was, no matter how sophisticated and assured, he was also vulnerable. It seemed to her that she’d never really noticed anyone else’s vulnerability before, as though her own jeopardy, helplessness, and unhappiness were so great, she’d never had a chance at any other perspective. Still later another thought came to her touched with a delicious sense of guilt: love could make a fool of anyone, not merely her, but Leslie too. It was an alien and wonderful thought, and she savored it for the way it bound her to the rest of humanity and for the way it promised at least as much power as it threatened to take away.
She had a marvelous lunch, preferring, at last, to eat by herself. She felt a little too inspired and energetic to eat with any of the salesladies. She didn’t wish to listen to their everyday conversations about the expense of children’s braces or whether to buy drapes for the dining room or paper the hall, or any of the ordinary, passionless discussions she had once envied precisely because they were so dull and safe, and therefore, seemed the hallmarks of full lives and happy marriages. Anyway, God only knew what she might have blurted in the state she was in, feeling, as she did, full of wonderful secrets and power.
And after work, at dinner with Leslie, it seemed to her she got a glimpse of the way life really ought to be. There was no animosity between them. None. For the first time in a long while, food tasted the way it should, and now and again she found herself giggling.
“Do you remember the time Lonnie Crocket put the garter snake in Mrs. Dunbar’s purse?” Leslie asked and laughed.
She did remember very well. Lonnie and Leslie had been in the tenth grade when she was in the twelfth; and, during lunch, Lonnie had managed to sneak a pretty big garter snake in Mrs. Dunbar’s purse, wisely figuring someone in the twelfth grade would be blamed. It had been in the spring, and Mrs. Dunbar was troubled with hay fever, and every so often she would yank a handkerchief from her purse, give her nose a blow and a wipe, and go on with the lesson. The strange thing was that, when she came out with the twenty-inch garter snake, there seemed to be a moment when even the most basic, primordial instinct failed and she had no idea what it was. Who would expect to find such a thing in one’s purse after all? Even Dolly Clarke, who sat in the front row, screamed before Mrs. Dunbar, although not as long or as piercingly as when Mrs. Dunbar’s puzzlement became, in the next heartbeat, profound and hysterical recognition. The poor, good woman left a puddle between her desk and the blackboard and a fetid cloud that seemed to hang at the front of the classroom for the rest of the afternoon, while first a substitute from one of the other grades and finally the principal came in to harangue and threaten them.
All through dinner the two of them remembered pranks and high school love affairs and hay rides and church picnics, and it was all so easy and comfortable that they lingered over every course. Although finally, they found they were talking less and spending more time giving each other long, fond, open appraisals over raised coffee cups and idle forks until Madeline dropped her eyes and said, “You know, I really would like to see your house … to see where you live … just so I can imagine you in it.”
Maybe he was too pleased to reply. She didn’t know. Maybe he couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say, but she sensed as much as saw him nod. Quite suddenly they both turned shy and took more time over their coffee than was necessary.
The house stood halfway up the mountain above Cedar Hill on a twisted residential street, so that the grand living room and dining room and the master bedroom looked down on the lighted streets of Cedar Hill with what seemed a benign but distinctly proprietary air. The house was made of stone; had wide, pegged, oak floors, stained a rich, warm color; and two full baths, which seemed wonderfully extravagant. It also had three large bedrooms, the most beautiful kitchen she’d ever seen, and a study with glassed-in bookshelves on either side of a huge granite fireplace and hearth. Everything was in excellent taste and neat—he had a cleaning lady twice a week—but somehow sterile too and without the warmth a woman’s constant presence and touch might have given it. Leslie’s wife had died while the house was being built, and she’d never lived in it.
“She got to fuss some at the builders, though
, while it was going up,” Leslie said.
“Ahhh,” Madeline said, truly and profoundly saddened, even as she was pleased that she might become the first, and not the second, mistress of this dwelling.
In the living room once more, she could see a wan reflection of herself in the dark windows surrounded by the faint image of Leslie’s furniture and appointments, all shot through with the lights of the town below. She wished to look as though she belonged, but she wasn’t so sure she did, nor did her reflection quite please her the way it had earlier in the day when she’d caught glimpses of herself in the fitting mirrors. She looked ghostly with the lights of Cedar Hill shining through her. In any case, she suspected Leslie knew as well as she did that she hadn’t come merely to look at his house, and suddenly that knowledge seemed to charge the atmosphere around her with uncertainty and make her palms misty. She thought of Edward, but she made herself turn toward Leslie and put her arms about his neck. “Oh Leslie,” she said, realizing she had almost, out of the instinctual weight of years, spoken another name. “Oh Leslie, I love you,” she insisted and kissed him. She held him as close as she possibly could, and after many long moments, when his lips almost left hers, she still didn’t release him. So they stood kissing for a long time until he began to pet her and she could feel him rising, and she began to shiver and tremble, head to toe. At last he pulled back and led her away.
In his bedroom, divested of her clothes, she was shocked to realize that she felt less shy than she’d ever felt around her husband. Not once in her previous life could she remember being naked without feeling the cooling touch of shame and the need to cover up. Nor had she ever allowed herself to admire a naked man, except in the most surreptitious little peeks and glances. It was as if Leslie were the first naked man she had truly ever seen. He was slender and handsome, she thought, although he didn’t look especially strong. Still, although his arms and legs were thin, they were well proportioned, and his chest and belly were thick with springy hair as silver as the hair on his head—odd, since the hair on his arms and legs and around his genitals was still mostly black. He was really quite remarkable, his nipples like dark badges among all that hair, and the curve of his penis and the orbs of his testicles, almost beautiful, almost endearing.